Win a Breathless Reads slipcase + other prizes!

I promised in my last post that I’d be doing an epic giveaway soon, and here it is! YAY! The amazing people at Penguin very kindly sent me some of their limited edition Breathless Reads slipcases featuring the ARCs of BLACK CITY, VENOM, ORIGIN, THE INNOCENTS and FALLING KINGDOMS, and because I’m feeling generous, I’m giving away one of these bad boys! Look how pretty it is:

Prizes

1st prize – Breathless Reads slipcase

2nd prize – Signed ARC of Black City

3rd prize – 10 signed Black City bookmarks

How to enter

Because Black City was selected as ‘Breathless Danger’ I thought I’d play on that theme. So in the comments section below, write a short scene (no more than 250 words) where your character is in danger! It can be in any genre (sci-fi, contemporary, fantasy etc, anything goes!) – just make sure it leaves us breathless!

At the end of the contest I will select my favourite 3 entries. Don’t forget to add your email address, otherwise I won’t be able to contact you.

You have until 12 midnight (EST) Friday 8 June to enter. The contest is open internationally. You can enter as many times as you like, but each entry must be unique.

Black City is available for pre-order now at Amazon, B&N and The Book Depository.

You can find me on:

• Twitter
• Facebook
• Goodreads

Good luck!

Breathless Reads ARC contest winner!

 

Sorry I’m a few days late announcing this (oops!). Because I feel so bad about keeping you waiting, I’m adding some additional prizes, where 3 runners-up will each receive 10 signed Black City bookmarks. Winners were selected using The Randomiser. 

Black City ARC contest winner

The winner of an ARC of Black City is…

Lisseth Torres

Congratulations Lisseth! I’ll pop the ARC in the post to you this week.

Signed bookmarks

The winners of the signed Black City bookmarks are:

• Foreva Lost in Books
• Deadtossedwaves
• airlia2012

Thanks to everyone else who entered. Check back next week, as I’ll be running another super awesome giveaway, and you won’t want to miss out on this epic prize! More to come…

The YAmazing Race with MGnificent Prizes winners!

Thanks to everyone who entered the YAmazing Race with MGnificent Prizes – I hope you had as much fun doing the race as we did hosting it!

Now to the bit you’ve all been waiting for… the winners!

Black City signed ARC

The winner of the signed ARC of Black City is…

LAURA CARTER

Congratulations! I’ll email you today to get your address. Thanks to everyone else who entered. Check back from time to time as I will be running more awesome contests leading up to the launch of Black City in November.

Black City is available for pre-order at Amazon, B&N, and The Book Depository.

*The winner was randomly selected by The Randomiser

Prize Packs

Head on over the the Apocalypsies blog today to find out who won the 6 Prize Packs!

Good luck!

The YAmazing Race with MGnificent Prizes!

*The contest is now over! Come back tomorrow to find out who won the signed ARC of BLACK CITY*

Hello racers and welcome to the YAmazing Race with MGnificent prizes, a blog-hop featuring 60 of the hottest debut authors of 2012, where you’ll get the chance to win one of six awesome prize packs featuring all sorts of swag, including ARCs, bookmarks and chapter critiques! 

Don’t know the rules? Then head on over to the Apocalypsies website, where you can get all the details and start the race.

And now… lets race!

BLACK CITY by Elizabeth Richards

A dark and tender post-apocalyptic love story set in the aftermath of a bloody war

In a city where humans and Darklings are now separated by a high wall and tensions between the two races still simmer after a terrible war, sixteen-year-olds Ash Fisher, a half-blood Darkling, and Natalie Buchanan, a human and the daughter of the Emissary, meet and do the unthinkable—they fall in love.

Bonded by a mysterious connection, that causes Ash’s long dormant heart to beat, Ash and Natalie first deny and then struggle to fight their forbidden feelings for each other, knowing if they’re caught they’ll be executed—but their feelings are too strong.

When Ash and Natalie then find themselves at the center of a deadly conspiracy that threatens to pull the humans and Darklings back into war, they must make hard choices that could result in both their deaths.

Black City is out November 13, 2012. Available for pre-order at Amazon, B&N and The Book Depository.

Read all that?

Good stuff, as you’ll need too know those deets for the quiz! Remember, you need to complete this quiz to be in for a chance of winning the Exploding Flamingos prize pack!

But wait! There’s more amazing giveaways!

Before you rush off to do the quiz, I’m giving away a signed ARC of Black City for one lucky racer! To be in for a chance of winning, simply leave a comment at the bottom of this post. Don’t forget to add your email, otherwise I won’t be able to get in contact with you! The winner will be drawn on Wednesday May 9th.

You earn bonus points if you:

• Like me on Facebook (F)
• Like me on Twitter (T)
• Tweet about the ARC giveaway (please include @theredpenofdoom and the link back to this post in your tweet!) (ARC)

*** Put the code letter(s) next to your comment, so I know what you’ve done.  :-)

Ready to do the quiz?

Yay! Yup, you’ve made it to the end of the Exploding Flamingos leg of the YAmazing  Race with MGnificent Prizes! Congratulations!!!

Complete the quiz here

Good luck!!!

Black City is a Fall 2012 Breathless Read! + ARC contest

I’m absolutely overjoyed to announce that BLACK CITY has been selected as one of Penguin’s Breathless Reads for Fall 2012!

Head on over to facebook.com/breathlessreads for more information about the Breathless Reads tour and read an excerpt of BLACK CITY.

BLACK CITY is out on November 13, 2012 and is available for pre-order at Amazon, B&N and The Book Depository.

ARC contest (International)

To celebrate, I’m giving away an ARC of BLACK CITY and 10 signed bookmarks!

To enter:

Simply leave a comment with your email address below, to be entered to win an ARC of BLACK CITY, or one of ten signed bookmarks!  You get bonus entries if you:

• Like me on Facebook (F)
• Like, Share or Comment on the official Breathless Reads wall post about BLACK CITY (you’ll need to scroll down the page a little) (BR)
• Tweet about BLACK CITY being a Breathless Read (please reference @theredpenofdoom and @PenguinTeen in the tweet & link to facebook.com/breathlessreads) (T)

*Put the code letter(s) in your comment indicating what you did. I work on an honor system, so I’ll trust you if you say you did it!

The closing date for this contest is midnight on Monday May 7th (EST). Winners will be drawn at random, and announced on my blog on  Monday May 14th.

Black City cover reveal!

YAY! I’m so, so, so thrilled to be able to reveal my gorgeous cover for BLACK CITY, book #1 of the Black City Chronicles, due out on 13 November 2012. 

To make this event even more special, Penguin Books for Young Readers have teamed up with the World’s Greatest Blogs TM to do an EPIC cover reveal and galley give away! 5 lucky winners will also receive a signed drawing of Ash & Natalie, sketched by my very own hand. Oooooh.

So head on over to any of these amazing blogs from 7am EST (that’s 12pm in the UK) today to see the sparkly new cover, plus read an exclusive excerpt of BLACK CITY, and be entered into the prize draw. Of course, the more blogs you visit, the more chances you have of winning! So pop along to them now and post your comments to enter the fabulous prize draw. Contest rules are on each of the blogs. Have fun!

• The Story Siren
• Presenting Lenore (+ Interview!)
• Safari Poet
• Katie’s Book Blog
• Living Fictitiously (+ Interview!)
• I Swim For Oceans
• Xpresso Reads
• Book Chic Club
• Icy Books
• Du Livre
• LC’s Adventures in Libraryland 
• A Cupcake and a Latte
• Dazzling Reads
• Bending the Spine
• Lindsay Cummings
• Reading Writing Breathing
• Eleusinian Mysteries of Reading 
• I Read Banned Books
• Cari’s Book Blog
• The Compulsive Reader
• The Sagacity Quest
• In the Best Worlds
• Book Whales
• Thoughts and Roses
• Book-splot
• Prince Balthazar
• Sarah’s Random Musings

BLACK CITY available for pre-order now

OMG, OMG, OMG, OMG, OMG! It’s really real! BLACK CITY is coming out on 13 November 2012, and is now available for pre-order on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and the Book Depository. Follow the links below to place your order.

Pre-order Black City

Amazon.com

Amazon.co.uk

Barnes & Noble

The Book Depository

‘Waiting on’ Wednesday

Big thanks to Petra ‘Safari Poet’ for making me her Waiting on Wednesday choice. I especially love the EPIC choon she selected as her theme for Black City. Head on over to her blog to check it out…

• View Waiting on Wednesday post

It’s the end of the world as we know it (and I feel fine!)

Hello 2012! This year is set to be an exciting one, what with the apocalypse coming and all, so with the end of days approaching, here are the top five things I’m most looking forward to this year,  before we go out with a bang:

5: WOMAN IN BLACK

I can’t wait to see this spooky horror both on stage and at the cinema this February!  There’s nowt I love more than a good scare, and nothing puts the heebie-jeebies in me more than ghosts…or spiders…or spider ghosts! EEEEPS! Plus the film stars my all-time weird crush Daniel Radcliffe (le dreamy sigh), so it’s going to be all levels of awesome.

4: CREWEL

Gen Albin’s debut novel  about a group of women called Spinsters who can weave the very fabric of reality sounds uh-mezzin, and I’m TOTALLY jealous I didn’t think of the idea first ;-p  Looking forward to reading it this Fall.

Read my interview with Gen Albin

3: HARRY POTTER STUDIO TOUR

Just brought my ticket for this, yay! I fully expect to get arrested for trying to thieve off some of Dan-Rad’s costumes.

2: THE HUNGER GAMES MOVIE

Mockingjay-pins at the ready! The Girl on Fire shoots her way onto our screens this March and it’s going to be epic. I loved, loved, loved the books and I just hope the movie does Katniss and Peeta proud.

1: BLACK CITY LAUNCH

SQUEEEE! Of course, the thing I am most excited about this year is the launch of my debut novel, BLACK CITY in August 2012. I can’t believe in the space of twelve months I’ve gone from being that weird girl who walked around her local bookstore daydreaming about being an author, to becoming…well, a weird girl who still walks around her local bookstore, but this time she has a secret smile on her lips.

I’ll keep you all posted on launch dates, cover reveals and how things are going with Book 2, but for now, Happy New Year to you all!

Get it written! – writing a sequel

What’s harder than writing your first book? Writing your second.

Urgh. Seriously. You’d think writing a sequel would be so simple. You’ve already got the characters, set up the universe, worked out the plot arc. Really, what’s there left to do except put fingers to the keyboard and type?

With a deadline looming on the horizon like an oncoming storm, I tried to pin-point why I’ve been having trouble writing the book, and it occurred to me this morning that I had fallen into the common pitfall of many newbie authors of ’trying too hard to impress’. I’m trying so hard to make every sentence perfect, every paragraph amazing, that I’m not actually writing anything – I’m just obsessing over the same stuff again and again, and driving myself stir-crazy in the process.

So my awesome writer chum Tracy Buchanan gave me some very sage advice today, which I shall pass on:

‘Just get it fucking written.’

Yup. Seems so simple, but she made a very good point. The first draft is just about getting the story down. It doesn’t need to be perfect. Heck, it doesn’t even need to be that good. It just needs to be fucking written.

So she’s ordered me not to re-read anything I’ve done until I’ve finished the book and that way I won’t nit-pick and obsess over the smallest thing, which upon revision I’ll probably just delete anyway.

So there we have it. I’m now gonna follow her advice and get it done.

Thanks Trixie-Pie!

To also help spur me on, I’m unofficially doing NaNoWriMo and have taken on the 50,000 word challenge for the month of November, so follow me on Twitter for updates and see how I’m doing. I’d love your support and encouragement, so feel free to Tweet me!

So far the NaNoWriMometer is at:

400 words

Just another 49,600 to go. Eeeps!